Pathway
by SeungSeiRan
Summary: Always considered mature and level-headed by others, Shannon thought old wounds could heal with time. On the other hand, the only way she and Bart may ever learn to move on is to go back to where they fell apart, to their last farewell. Shannon/Bart.
1. Chapter 1

Hi! I'm SeungSeiRan and yes, this is my first venture into BSC fanfiction (which I feel rather bad about, considering I was a huge fan of the series when I was a kid). But anyway, this fic was conceived and written as part of LiveJournal's **Small Fandoms Bang**. I always thought Shannon was quite neglected, compared to the other BSC members with regards to both canon and fanfiction, so here's my attempt at bringing her character into the light. I hope you guys enjoy reading. Feedback/concrit is appreciated :)

Notes: Post-series fic, focuses on Shannon/Bart with a few other characters playing minor roles. Also comes with fanmix! (see my profile for the link)

Disclaimer: _The Baby Sitters Club_ and its respective characters belong to Ann M. Martin.

* * *

Shannon Kilbourne is fourteen and afflicted with wanderlust.

It was that summer day before ninth grade started in a week, when the Connecticut air was thick as stew with moisture and meltdowns. She'd seen the Thomas' car – Nanny's Pink Clinker took on a greasy, gaudy sheen in the shimmering heat – chug along across the street to their driveway. She'd gaped when the passenger door swung open and out sprung Kristy in a black mini-skirt, all tan-lines and toned shins.

Shannon had reserved that picture for the inevitable interrogation that would follow (that is, if she ever got a hold of Kristy again soon. Summer school, college camps, and the occasional sitting job have her grounded, if not ground down). It came in handy sooner than she expected, the following night when she spied the two of them from her bedroom window (she could always put the snooping down to mandatory Journalism class, if she was caught).

Kristy was wearing the mini, accented with a frown. The boy she's with had his arm around her with all the ease of a stranger poised uncomfortably in the role of an escort. Shannon can't see the sparks but she knows there's a fight brewing. Every little smile he tucks into the glances he gives Kristy is smudged with the strain it takes.

Bart Taylor. She guesses Kristy's right when she says he's not quitter.

They walk up to the Thomas' door, silent, hands closed and not touching. Shannon thinks Kristy doesn't say goodbye when she opens the door and leaves him on the porch. He gets the hint anyway.

Bart Taylor is one of those boys that look better from a vantage, she decides. Then again, most of them do.

She sees him in Math class on Tuesday, doodling over the front page of his textbook. He stares blankly at the question thrown at him and she notes the harsh stubby clouds of fuzz lining his chin.

A month later, he asks her to the Autumn Ball and she says no because the Drama Club's production of _The Romancers_ is in full swing so rehearsals are held almost daily. Two weeks in and she notices he's been attending every single one of them. Come opening night, she's told she made a wonderful Sylvette on stage. She finds him loitering near the back of the auditorium, obviously uncomfortable in the vicinity of theater snobs and proud parents.

Shannon's more grateful than she lets on so she organizes a study-group where she can help him with the next Calculus test without it being that obvious. After a particularly frustrating hour, over spread sheets scrawled with unbalanced equations and asymmetrical triangles, he tells her that she really shouldn't have. He almost groans it.

It's a tad too late though. She's reached that point of no return where she just _can't_ give up on him and she's sure he'd see it too if he tried just that little bit harder.

He scores an A on the test.

* * *

She spends the summer before tenth grade with her family at a rented townhouse in St. Margarita, Italy. The apartment is too large for five people but the east-side wall is almost entirely made up of ceiling-high windows that look out onto the nearby bay. Her Dad likes looking out at the yachts, tossing them potential names as he and her mother drink fruity cocktails on the balcony: _Supersize, Kathy's Katch, Lucky Girl's, Game On!_ They're all terrible and make her laugh for a while.

Italy's all right for the moment; the novelty of a sun that sears across from the Mediterranean, creamy gelatos she and her sisters sneak from one of the roadside stalls, the tall, dark, delightfully handsome vendor who winks at all his lady customers. Like everything else, it wears off without her trying, though she tries to quench the spurts of restlessness by practicing her colloquial Italian on the streets. The only locals smile at her accent.

Greer writes from Paris and Meg from London. If Shannon ignores the different handwriting on each, she still notes the sameness of their lives away from Stoneybrook. The parties, the shopping, the boys.

Bart writes her from Cincinnati where he's visiting his grandparents. His neighbor's half-Cheyenne so he gets to go to a pow-wow later in the week. A follow-up arrives sooner than she expects, elaborating on the 'epic' drum music he'd watched the tribe members flail and whirl about to, the fried bread he'd gorged on, and the spice of herb-smoked clouds he'd inhaled.

She sends him flashy postcards that cost a dollar for four. 'Wish You Were Here'.

He still writes back in sheaves of letters. She asks about Kristy once but never finds out.

After the second week and fourth stack of paper she receives, she decides to write him properly, out of guilt. And she sets out to do just that, lying back on the chaise-lounge in the sitting-room like she would do with a script or book straight off the summer reading-list. 'Dear Bart' precedes all the confessions, sunny secrets, mischeifs, and minor rebellions that only explode gracefully on ink. She has no idea why she does it but she keeps at it until her mother calls her to go shopping. Babydoll tops and espadrilles are cast down with glazed eyes as Shannon contemplates the consequences of her unraveling.

In the end, she doesn't send the letter. She writes him a note instead, saying when she'll be back home.

The day after they arrive, the week before classes commence, there's a piercing whittle of a whistle in the air that summons her to the window. Bart's waiting on the porch, for what she doesn't quite comprehend until she's already strode out and flung her arms around him. Before she can put it down to hormones, he's kissing her and she suddenly thinks of how his skin feels like the burnt crust of bread as her cheek brushes his jaw.

A month into school, she confesses to Kristy about their two or more dates. Kristy turns away with a laugh and Shannon does not understand why.

* * *

It's his sixteenth birthday in July. She surprises him with a jacket emblazoned with his favorite Major League team. It's even signed by their star pitcher whom she's seen on a poster in his room. When he only chuckles a little and rolls his eyes when she thinks she's not looking, she wonders if it's the wrong kind of surprise she'd bargained with.

"What's wrong?" she presses on, her voice sounding too loud to herself in the corner of the empty baseball-diamond. "I got the name wrong, didn't I? It was supposed to be 'Farrow' or something, and I got you Farley's…"

"No, no," he's soothing her now, sliding his hand into hers. "Of course not. I love it. You shouldn't have."

She doesn't know which trio of words is the one she's growing the most tired of hearing.

But it's really not so much what he says than what he doesn't. Maybe it's his 2.3 GPA (and her 3.8), his beat-up Nissan (and her pristine Mustang), his demotion to second-string on the varsity team (and her promotion to deputy editor of the school paper), or his ego, really (and her lack of success in soothing the recurring sting of its bruises).

When it's cooler in the evenings, they drive out to the fields near New Haven. Shannon always thinks about bringing a telescope but drops the idea when the thought of him feeling ignored comes to mind. She doesn't 'get' boys in the ways either Greer or Meg do. She's smart, studious, 'interesting' Shannon who normally prefers things labeled and in boxes. She likes being around Bart because he doesn't fit into any she knows and that's a refreshing change of scenery. He's got the loveliest smile, really, even if she hasn't seen a genuine one in a while.

She gets restless. So restless that she can't help snapping after the fourth or fifth wall of silence in a row.

"Is it us? Me?"

"You?" He really looks genuinely shocked at the idea. That's what she thinks. "I could never be mad at you, Shannon."

"But you get tired of me."

"Shan – "

She cuts him off before he can say any of those three words she hates. "You will."

She leaves him at his locker and bursts into tears as soon as she gets home. Her mother's not home but Shannon honestly misses her at this point in her life. She isn't perfect and her mother has finally come to understand that.

Maybe it's time Bart should too.

When Shannon's this upset, all she wants to do is curl up in bed with a box of macadamia nut cookies by her side and _The Princess Bride_ for company. She doesn't.

What Shannon does do is throw herself into her work: a few posters for French Club, some drafts to be proofread before publication in the paper. She keeps going until her boyfriend calls her at eleven and tells her he misses her.

* * *

Senior year is tough enough for Bart as it is with acceptable grades to earn and college lists to skim through. She sometimes wonders what would have happened if his parents hadn't decided on a divorce midway through spring.

She thinks she knows enough on how to help. She's babysat for kids whose parents had split up, she's seen what those like Druscilla Peterson have gone through. She could handle it.

On their second date since the news, this time at a fancy restaurant that doesn't allow him in until he borrows a dinner jacket from the maitre d', he opens his mouth to say something and then closes it. She doesn't think she wants to know. He drops her home before her curfew and she kisses him, feeling nothing but his still lips.

Then, college letters are out and she's been accepted to three.

There's never a perfect time to tell him the news, when he's either mellow or cheerful enough. It always seems like Bart's in limbo, wandering along the edge of gloom, never right off into the deep side but it's dark enough that it worries her. He's in one of those places now, as they sit on an empty bleacher overlooking the quiet of SDS' baseball diamond.

"You used to love playing."

"I did. I coached a team of kids." He says it like it's amazing he was even there. Like he didn't believe that he ever was. Or that he could ever return. "Kyle will be starting high-school next year."

"Maria's starting middle school then."

It pops out before she can properly phrase her meaning. "Have you decided where you want to go to college?"

In one way, she needs to know so that she can get his address so they can still write each other, get their schedules coordinated so that they see one another during vacations, even pay each other visits if they can. That's the logical part of her talking. The other part, the one hiding away deeper within her, is beginning to stress over how to hold the fraying threads of a relationship together. The romance had been good while it lasted. It was still there, faded, a washed-out pink compared the golden-red flush of summer love but it was _there_.

Shannon believed it was. Still.

Bart sighs at the question and she can sense the axe falling before the strike even hits her.

"It doesn't matter. I don't think we're cut out for this."

They walk home slowly, hands by their sides. Crickets chirp somewhere in the trees but she only hears their echoes from the last few years when they'd walked this same way before, hand-in-hand, and ended it cheek-to-cheek after a goodbye kiss.

She doesn't cry when none of that happens. He claps a hand on her shoulder and wishes her good luck.

The next day, she settles on the college furthest away from Stoneybrook.


	2. Chapter 2

Her first year of college felt like the prelude to a terribly cheery montage of prep-slum pseudo-haven. For the first time in a long while, Shannon had her mother to be thankful for one change. Her new wardrobe of dark skinny jeans, v-necks, and keffiyehs helped her feel like she belonged, at least superficially, in Boston's upscale cliques at uni. Her father's name didn't amount to much away from Stoneybrook but that was the point. She didn't mind fitting in, just as long as she didn't blend in so well that her real colors ran and pooled at her feet in favor of transparency.

She'd learnt a while back that depth suited her best. Just enough that anyone would have to guess what lay beneath.

During her last months of senior year in high school, she had ruled out journalism and psychology as potential career options, even though her friends and counselor had assured her it was a natural choice, given her abilities. Those subjects required an inquisitive mind which she still retained and an affinity for people which she still possessed, however scuffed it was. But they also needed the right type of questions which she knew by then that she was grasping for. Four years seemed like enough to get it right but she needed assurance. It didn't seem like it would come.

In the end, she'd opted for a major in Business Studies with a minor in Italian. She topped up her French and Spanish on the side in her dorm-room when her room-mate wasn't around. It was a little distracting trying to shape your mouth over phrases like _oui, l'ble s'moud, l'habit s'coud_ when there was someone watching it.

Greer and Meg haven't written her as often as she'd done them. She'd only assumed it was because Meg had a boy or three hanging on to her every other word in New York and Greer finally had a social life going on for her in LA. They'd chosen places as far removed from Stoneybrook as possible for a reason. The occasional hastily-snapped Polaroid told Shannon everything she needed to know.

There were times when she wondered about the Club; the last time had been in one of the cafes near campus, when she'd watched a little boy whine to his mother about an extra-large cookie he couldn't have before dinner. How were the Pike kids doing? Was Karen Brewer stalking the same halls of Stoneybrook Middle School Kristy once had, dictating society meetings or running for class president? Was Druscilla Peterson walking down those same hallways, still a frizzy-haired outcast decked in black? Had Jackie Rodowsky made it past puberty?

And the girls: Stacey, Claudia, Mary Anne, Kristy,…

And…

And.

She always stopped herself before she could come back to him.

One way or another, she got through her freshman year of college without the usual fuck-ups. There were no early morning return-trips from out of town, thanks to any last night party binges. No drugs, no free love, no sheets smelling of sweat and unfamiliar cologne. Shannon Kilbourne was almost outcast for being the squeaky-clean small-town nerd. She was lucky she was pretty; she knew that.

She had come to Boston, expecting a world she would have had to struggle to let go of. One which sounded like the New York of Stacey McGill's reimagining: savvy, sassy, sophisticated but clean and clear-cut as an Oxford comma. Academia.

She'd had to contend with high-school reruns. Reruns with deans instead of principals and sometimes overflowing with beer but it was sickeningly familiar.

The year ended on a high note for her. She was the only one not struggling with last-minute conclusions to essays that should've been handed in a day earlier. There was plenty of time to wander around town, maybe reel in a latte from the nearest Starbucks (cleverly situated across from a second-hand bookstore), buy a fresh muffin and feed half to the birds gathering in the square. She did just that, until the sun set at seven and the dark cool of the evening had edged in further than she liked.

Back in her room, her suitcase was still half-packed as were her intentions. Tomorrow, on a plane, back to Connecticut.

_Your sisters are looking forward to seeing you soon_, her mother had assured in that swaying, cheery voice that oscillated in great sloping movements between uncertainty and lying. Tiffany and Maria had never hated her but she was still their oldest sister and paragon. They might have grown wilder over the past few months and Shannon knew she would be encroaching, never mind that it was her home too. In her absence, they might have had room to finally spread their blooming arms.

There was another reason she wasn't looking forward to returning.

She didn't fight it this time, even when she had to struggle with her suitcases in the airport. He was like a little pool of rain-water she'd collected somehow and saved when she needed a mirror of her dating-record. He rippled away when she tried too hard to keep him cupped in her hands. Formless as water, opaque as a rain-cloud.

He did disappear once she was actually up in the clouds. There were more interesting strangers to take note of; here was an obese young woman flushing terribly as she tried to wriggle inconspicuously into her seat, there was a man who could be smiling because he was thinking of his wife or secretary. These were easy little clichés to follow, ones that couldn't explode in her face and scar her eternally.

Then she fell asleep and that really was the dangerous part.

She didn't see or hear him come to her like she expected, just like all the others. It was a perfect Autumn in Connecticut, she was standing on her porch with her cheek against one of the balusters and all of her sudden, his arms were warm around her shoulders and his mouth was perfect, kissing her neck, up along her jaw, whispering those three terrible words in her year.

Shannon woke up with tears in her eyes and the thump of her heart plummeting sixty feet when she noticed that the plane had landed.

* * *

Her parents hadn't changed a lot since she'd last seen them at Winter Break. Though she suspected her father had invested in a dye-job to hide the graying temples that had sprouted soon after Tiffany's sixteenth birthday.

As they drove back from the airport in New Haven, Shannon peered through the windows, watching for any visible changes. It was a beautiful time to be home for the summer. The sun shading the trees and hills in an emerald-gold made her think of a painting hung up in the living-room at home when it had been a comfortable place to be. Teenage sisters with active social lives did wreak a surprising amount of havoc if her mother's frequent calls were to be believed. If the girls weren't ignoring her, they were backtalking so couldn't their oldest sister exert _some_ influence, even if she happened to be all the way in farthest Massachusetts?

Shannon wasn't sure why this had to be her duty at a time like this. Tiffany and Maria hunted boys with the passive-aggressiveness of Venus fly-traps in wet, sticky heat. Their adolescence was the stuff of legends where hers had been a shaky play-by-numbers of sorts. They had admirers, Shannon had thought she'd had true love.

That ridiculous little notion always pained her a bit now, when she _had _to think of it. She was fresh off a year of college and she wanted to exhale that feeling, sophistication and cynicism wrapped in a neat bow. She was officially the woman she'd always wanted to be, even if the thirteen year old of once upon a time did lift her head up from time to time. Like she did now when they were passing by the Brewer-Thomas's, on the way to their driveway.

There were no extra cars parked in the garage. No kids' bikes abandoned in the garden. No softball gear littering the porch. Babysitting dates really did seem light years away from where she sat.

Obeying an old instinct she never knew she needed to kick, Shannon looked until her gaze fell upon a familiar window. From behind the rustling curtain, she could've sworn at the sight of a familiar face, ponytail and all.

* * *

The barbeque party was held the day after in the Brewer-Thomas's backyard beginning at noon. It'd probably been Kristy's idea in the first place since there didn't seem enough people around whom Shannon knew. David Michael had shot up a foot and a half since she'd last seen him and Mary Anne's hair had grown out even longer. She and Kristy discussed hectic class schedules, car problems, phone bills, and silly boys as the three of them strolled around the block, until the burgers were cooked through. Shannon kept quiet, enjoying the break from academia and sordid sex secrets. Stoneybrook may still be old and pokey but she knew right where she fit here. Things were far from complicated.

It was only when they found their way back to the yard that she noticed the baseball cap. It's the same cherry-red St Louis Cardinals logo splashed on the front which is turned so it faces her while he stares straight on ahead in the same direction. If that doesn't have her heart sinking, it's the wheel-chair that really shoots the cannon.

She froze in her tracks. Mary Anne followed suit with a hand over her mouth. Kristy's voice fell to a whisper as she tried to take it in. "You didn't know?"

The most elementary questions buzzed through her head: what, how, when, where, why? The high-school journalist in her sputtered and came to a dead halt as soon as he turned to look back at her. Not a wave in sight. The ache that materialized in her instead sunk its teeth deeper when he turned away. This wasn't how things were supposed to go, if they ever had to come to this at all.

Lunch is subdued with the parents gossiping in a bunch at one table while they sat at the next. Shannon's appetite had vanished long since and apparently so had the others' for conversation. Each time a corner of his mouth quirks, she hoped briefly, hopelessly, that it would be the crooked smile that had always drawn people to him, like needles to north.

That smile didn't come that day. She could understand why and it still hurt.

_Maybe if…_

She tried to force out the old bitterness with a generous helping of Nanny's home-made strawberry ice-cream. It only brought back another memory: another summer afternoon, a fair, a Ferris-wheel, two seats, two cones, two years ago.

Kristy and Mary Anne must have sensed the discomfort since they didn't allow her to be alone with Bart. They kept the conversation going, mostly side-along: Shannon listened with one ear. The other tingled familiarly whenever he murmured a reply to David Michael's baseball questions or a 'hey there, boy' to her namesake: Shannon the dog was in as fine condition as she, her coat shining and her teeth gleaming when bared in a hapless grin. She tried telling herself she was imagining the slight sadness in the dog's eyes after it had sniffed near his legs.

"It was really his fault, you know."

She almost jumped in her seat. Kristy held her gaze, steely-eyed.

"Honest, Shannon. Even he's admitted it by now."

"How?"

Kristy allowed herself a glance at their former boyfriend, concealed under a heavy-lidded blink. "Driving under the influence. Him and a couple of his goof-off friends. That's what the cops said."

Maybe the better question would have been 'why?'

It fluttered in her chest, swelling as his hand reached out, past hers, to lift a napkin off a stack. Before she could make up her mind, he'd backed away as if stung. She had reached forward, only to touch little but wood and air.


	3. Chapter 3

She hoped that there would come a day when none of this ever mattered.

In retrospect, her life had been too long in the making. She had had to stumble, scrape her knees, more times than she'd liked and she hadn't even got it right in the end. Her balancing act was still a work-in-progress: the heart being too willful, the mind too cautious. There had once been a time where things were less complex. Candy-coated, in fact.

Her hand felt around in her pocket, more from recollection than reason.

Around ninth grade, sugar was everyone's fix. Stoneybrook being Stoneybrook, picket fences, apple pies, and true love hearts at sixteen, it seemed like the perfect set-up for cheesy Valentine deals which she'd always pretended to view as beneath her from age thirteen onwards. Shannon being Shannon Kilbourne was only a member of every committee that organized the annual Valentine's Dance in name and actions. She knew what was expected of her: she got things done and hoped everyone would – somehow, in some way – appreciate it.

In many ways, high school had tempered the feeling. Several weekdays concerning lazy club-mates at drama rehearsals and five typos too many nobody else had bothered to pick up on at the newspaper often left her muggy and listless, thinking back to her baby-sitting nights and trying to come up with an unfavorable comparison. Shannon knew she had the brains, the talent, maybe even the looks if she had time to catch a glance in a mirror, but the sum of all these had rarely amounted to match on score-sheets graded on the amount of people lingering near your table in the cafeteria or how many guys' numbers you could check off in your little black book.

If you even had that little black book. Binders crammed with scripts and drafts didn't count.

When it came down to it though, she wasn't a complete nerd or outcast. She had her priorities in the right place and that ought to have been all that mattered. With that, she'd comfort herself during Bart's practices, when a passing soph tossed him a wink, when none of that should have made her ache because it was stupid and immature and shallow and childish and _just not worth it_.

There had been a time she'd considered ending things with him, even before senior year. She was growing too cynical then and he might move on to sweeter girls, the ones like Mary Anne Spier in their pink sweaters and plaid skirts, who showed their boyfriends support by knitting them varsity sweaters, baking them cookies. The idea hurt worse than any flirty comment from someone with their eye on him. In short, fourteen had been trying, even though she knew that many probably had it a lot worse than her.

Besides, they had been friends then. Albeit, complete with the shifty air-quotes but there was still time to let him go, before the worst. She had an image to live up to, the calm, level-headed friend who reminded the others that bad boys were only immature men, the cute, naïve ones were just kids who wouldn't want to grow up with you, and sweet, crooked smiles could only strike so deep.

Shannon had felt anything but calm when she'd realized that it was a certain smile that had her cheeks burning on the day they'd agreed to meet up at the Autumn Fair in Mercer.

It took a while to get used to it, amidst the steady mantra of _'This is not a date, this is not a date'_ dying with each crunch of the browned leaves they stepped on their way. There were stalls selling pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies with orange icing, cinnamon-and-raisin shortcakes, fresh apples and candied, cloudy tufts of pink cotton candy, caramel corn in earthy wooden bowls. Something in her stomach twisted as they sampled treats from each, something that had her fearing she would suddenly burst into a giddy, sonnet-spewing fit she'd seen the other girls in when they talked about moments like these.

"You know, I forgot to ask: which teams do you support?"

"None," she blurted, flushing harder as soon as she realized her mistake. "Um, sorry."

To her surprise, he'd grinned. "Cool. Then I guess you wouldn't mind if I did all the talking instead?"

"Actually, I would."

"So, what do _we_ talk about?"

She returned his gaze, discovering how the late sun seemed to bring out chatain highlights in his hair, that his eyes took on a warmth that was both calming and stirring. She almost looked away, beyond what lay right before her.

"Maybe we won't have to. Talk, I mean."

"So what's it gonna be, then?" He stopped, stood, drew an imaginary rectangle on an invisible blackboard between them, mouthing the next word carefully, obviously joking. "_Sign_. _Language_?"

His smile was a beautiful sight to behold in this light. "Perhaps."

He faked a frown, placing a head over an apparently broken heart. For a second, she wondered if that might be true, that boys could be broken like the playthings they catcalled after.

The next second, he was hammering wooden balls at a target range of coconuts on stands. Five points got you a teddy-bear small enough to hold with both your hands but any boy who'd dated Kristy Thomas in the past would have to possess a competitive streak as vindictive as hers. Bart tossed ball after ball, until he was down to his last spare dollar. Fortunately for him, he did finally score a hundred off five coconuts knocked to the ground.

"I guess the last-minute adrenalin rush helped," he'd said as he pressed the chest-sized bear into her arms. "Man, I feel like McDowell in that Yankees game against…"

Shannon had not known what came over her then, but she had tried to keep it close to her: the stutter of her heart along the barely-heard 'thank you', the trace of her fingers along the cotton fur where his hands had brushed not too long ago…

Nowadays, she found herself going back to days like that, often during the most unexpected moments. Anything could trigger it; the smell of cinnamon in the wind from an open-door bakery, a glimpse of a tall, lean figure in a baseball jacket strolling along the sidewalk, the sun on a cool day in October. She didn't cry, not any more. She had learnt to take them as they came.

She wondered if she was masochistic enough to welcome them. It wasn't like they weren't any other boys who loved baseball and blondes. There had been the dashing grad-student from England, the cool senior who frequented the same coffee-shop as she. But none of it was like _that_, not like what she had felt for him.

* * *

They were sitting on the Taylors' porch two days later, him and her.

This was no happy reunion. She knew that.

He cleared his throat before beginning, glancing discreetly at his legs. Bart was handsome still, even with the chair. Of course she could see past that, if he had to ask.

"I guess you must be wondering…"

"If you want to tell me…" she replied before he could finish. "I mean, you don't have to. Kristy filled me in on some of the details. The accident… and all."

That didn't sound right.

Bart appeared to have sensed the discomfort in her voice. "Yeah. 'And all'."

Complete with the old air quotes.

"Bart, were you really – "

"Stone drunk, yes. I won't lie to you, Shannon."

Again, the terrible 'why' weighed heavy in her throat where it had stuck. So, she nodded, digging her head in the sand where she could rummage through every scrap of their time together, willing herself to see the signs that should have warned her. Signs that she should have taken heed of.

"Well?"

She started, fully aware of his eyes on her. "Well what?"

"Where're the questions? You always liked asking them."

"I'm majoring in Business, not Journalism."

"Oh." He nodded and she thought she'd got off easy. Until…

"You could've told me."

_That_ stung, not least because it was true. Since when had he even wanted to talk after their break-up? She had done most of it then, had even been willing to do most of the listening.

Or was she really being unfair? Look at him now.

"I could've, yes. But it wasn't as if you tried either."

"Yeah, but I…" It was a good time to pause. A car filled with cheering teens had passed by, across from their perch. Youth, sun-splashed in cotton t-shirts and bathing suits underneath. The breadth of his silence stretched until they disappeared around the corner.

"… I didn't know what to do."

Her hand tingled for his.

"I still don't know."

When she folded hers into his, he didn't wince.

"I think about what my thirteen year old self would say if he… well, I… if I saw me now… God, it's disgusting…"

She gulped down a sigh.

* * *

Maria had gone out of her way to be as far as different from her sisters as possible. The skinny jeans, plaid shirts, and Green Day blaring from her headphones were likely indicators of which route she had taken. It was actually the new-found cynicism in her baby sister that Shannon found most disconcerting. She was fixing herself a peanut-butter and plum jam sandwich in the kitchen when Maria dropped the bomb.

"You're not getting back with Bart after all, aren't you?"

The knife slid off the crust. "What made you think I would in the first place?"

"You seemed like the type." Maria replied with a superior shrug, lowering the bait for the set-up question. Shannon took it anyway, deciding against any wisdom she ought to have picked up at this point.

"What type?"

"The love-'em-and-never-leave-'em type. You've never a real boyfriend before or after him."

"A 'real' boyfriend?"

Having dipped a spoon into the open jam-jar, Maria took her time sweeping it out, licking the purple jelly with a slow smirk. "You're still a virgin, right?"

Shannon set down the knife, focusing her energy into the glare she directed at her sister. Maria immediately relented, so there was a point scored for powers of authority.

"I am. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Of course. Not that you two would be able to get…" Maria froze. The heat of Shannon's stare had descended to an icy extreme. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry! I shouldn't have asked."

Hours later, her annoyance at that unfounded assumption still burned a hole through her brooding at the window in her room. Her parents' laughter from the living-room carried all the way up here and she couldn't help but think of him again with his mouth pressed in a thin, rigid line like it had been on that night at the diamond.

She could go ahead and agree with Maria: life wasn't fair and that was it.

But there it was again, the niggling voice in her head that just needed to know more. Another one, just as sardonic as her sister's, began to blame it on her. Shannon the Incorrigible Perfectionist, unable to accept that she'd gone wrong somewhere.

The one that wanted to comfort her was soft and low. Weak, even.

"It just happens…"

She tried repeating those three words to herself, hoping they'd miraculously link in a blinding moment of clarity, like a mantra that would lull her into a warm, bright dream.

"It just happens… it just happened…"

A tense change was all it took. The past was done with and there was no going back to erase that girl she had been. If Bart was bitter, she couldn't blame him but she still had time to move. She had opportunities, second chances. Why freeze and rewind to days she could hardly take back, let alone waste time regretting?

Maybe time was all he had too. Time to move on, time to grow from this.

Maybe time would be enough for them both.


	4. Chapter 4

Sundays at the Kilbourne residence had become a study in absences. The door to Tiffany's room swung open carelessly and Shannon was able to snatch an eyeful of the sheer thigh-highs dangling from the back of a swivel desk-chair. She didn't know whether to feel disgusted or worried. Tiffany had turned sixteen with not so much a bang, than a solid boom of hormonal flesh on display. True, their parents wouldn't have to worry about their child being approached for a _Penthouse_ cover-shoot but white-bread towns in farthest Connecticut generally held fast to dress-codes that frowned upon bare midriffs in late July.

Maria's room was empty, though Shannon couldn't come up with suitable enough reason for it. How did thirteen year old budding hipsters plan on spending free mornings away from the overwhelmingly teeming, bovine mainstream? A vision of an art-deco club-house catering juvenile members in horn-rims and indie band tees made her grimace over her cocoa. The pony-loving swim-club member she'd grown up with would have snubbed her sun-tanned nose.

It also happened to be one of those muggy days with sweat in the air; one of those things that could be felt, not smelt first.

Her cell-phone rang and she had to climb up back all the way to her room where it lay nestled next to her pillow. She mostly used it as an alarm-clock on vacation.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Shannon." Kristy replied in greeting, without much honey in her words. "Mary Anne, Claudia, and I were heading to the pool at the community center. We were wondering if you were free."

She could sense it, the lack of the usual crispness in Kristy's voice; a resignation she found perturbing.

"Well, I am. Though if you think it'd be a crowd with all of us included…"

"Lord, it's a whole swimming pool, Shannon. If it does get crowded with the kids coming in afterwards, we'll head over to The Rosebud."

"I haven't bought a new swim-suit."

"Why would you? It's just the three of us."

True, just the three of them. Three sometime-ago friends she'd only kept in sporadic contact with. Greer and Meg hadn't returned home for the summer so she had little else to fall back on. For a second, Shannon wondered if what her sisters had implied was right: did she really need to get a life outside of work and one lingering break-up?

Well…

"Okay," she agreed, hoping her wariness wouldn't show. "What time are you guys meeting up?"

"Noon, sharp. Bring a towel and sun-block. It's scorching out here."

For everything spoken between them, Shannon couldn't help but smile at the tone she heard. Bossy, organized Kristy Thomas who always had a catch for every curve you hit her with. That is, almost every curve.

For the rest of the day, Shannon resolves to keep one thing to the minimum: thinking.

Classes were out for three whole months, she didn't have to spend her time pouring over market-growth charts and case-studies, analyzing each little detail she picked on. She was back home, with people she used to know, returning to places that had once been part of her playground growing up. She would sit back, relax, and try to put her mind where her mouth was. Closed, silent, quiet, at ease.

* * *

Claudia was eyeing the blond lifeguard on duty near the diving-board. Time had worn down many people Shannon knew and Claudia's fashion sense seemed to have taken most of the taming for her. The bikini she wore was neon-green, striking against her pale skin, and her hair was free from its old spectacular side ponytails. Shannon had expected her style to evolve from crackpot Nineties artist but the cynicism that came with the new Claudia Kishi had sunk in a like a sick feeling. Whatever went on at Stoneybrook High School to weather anyone like this, she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

After a few long seconds staring, Claudia jabbed a thumb at the blond. "I think I dated him."

Shannon just followed her gaze to Kristy. They'd been through school together, after all. Kristy didn't even spare the guy a glance.

"Yeah, for how long after whose party?"

"Couple of weeks, after Erica's Halloween fest. Gross kisser. His tongue felt all rubbery and weird, like, whenever he shoved it on my mouth I felt like he was trying to wipe me out like an eraser…"

She watched Kristy carefully and was surprised that she only shrugged in reply. Mary Anne grimaced before dipping herself below the water. Claudia continued with little heed to either as they loitered about their corner of the pool.

"Not kidding. I think he was from Mercer, someone Erica knew from… I dunno, anyway, Jack Whatever. Varsity basketball team, cute Honda Civic, bad kisser. So give me one good reason to stick around here longer. It can't be the guys in this place."

Kristy looked up with a steeliness in her eyes, one which had Shannon wondering. "Claud, art schools have requirements too. A high school diploma is one thing. When are you going to complete your GED?"

Soon, all Shannon could make of Claudia in the water was her black hair clouding her face as she leant back, drifting away from the question.

"_Claud_." Kristy murmured, her gaze still boring into her.

"You know, I've been wondering if four more years of textbooks and classrooms are really for me. Picasso never finished school either. I could've spent these past two months living it up in New York or LA instead of drowning in all those calculus notes I've had to prep for."

"Well, gosh, Claudia. All you had to do was hit Stacey up with a call. I'm sure she would have loved having you over at her Manhattan loft, sleeping on her Bloomingdale sheets, trying on her Gucci shoes, slurping down sugar-free lattes while you snuggle under those green umbrellas outside the closest Starbucks – "

"Kristy…" Mary Anne, ever the peacemaker, chimed in while Claudia scowled.

Shannon had expected change, just not for it to come around in circles. Back in the BSC, they'd had their share of petty disagreements. Whenever she'd thought about recently, she thought they were just being who they were at the time: thirteen, too full of ideas, too unused to easy compromises. The exchange she'd seen smacked of déjà vu. This was a scene she'd watched replayed over the years with different actors and issues. The spark of trouble had not been bluntly spat out with a child's cruelty this time, but she still felt its bite.

They did leave for the Rosebud Café when it got crowded, though Shannon put it down to the swell of Kristy's temper and Claudia's bruised ego in the same room. These hung over them as they sidled into an empty booth by a window overlooking the street, a pair of black balloons you only had to really look at to see.

As if she wanted to prove that at least _she_ had done some growing up over the years, Mary Anne attempted to patch things up. After enduring a few rounds of monosyllabic grunts as answers from either of her oldest friends, she finally turned to Shannon.

"So, how was Boston?"

"Bustling." Seeing the eager expectation on Mary Anne's face prodded Shannon to add more. "It was really beautiful in the Fall, pretty much like Connecticut except with this… this sort of buzz. Whatever it was, it just matched the place so perfectly."

Shannon tested her words before she let them out. They each sounded the same to her: emptier and emptier. She didn't hate Boston, she didn't love Boston. She had returned home, she had turned away from home. It certainly was home except that fit her too tight like an old favorite sweater she'd outgrown. It only warmed the parts of her it clung closest too.

Whether Mary Anne had sensed her exact meaning or not, she nodded approvingly. "I used to have this dream of leaving home for college myself when I was a kid. But I guess I've grown so used to Stoneybrook and Connecticut. Not that anything else would be better or worse."

Shannon definitely caught the quick reassuring glance she passed to Kristy, matching the pace of her last sentence.

"And Stoneybrook University is worth the wait. I'll be done with nursing degree in two more years and then I can apply for an internship at StoneyBrook General. They're affiliated."

"Sounds good." Shannon decided to bypass asking Claudia about her academic future by turning to Kristy instead. "So how's that degree coming along? Journalism, right?"

"Yeah. I'm thinking about going into sports reporting."

"Cool."

A current of familiarity ran through Shannon as she wondered where she'd heard this one before. It passed right over her as soon as their food arrived. They spent the rest of their meal trading quips about who'd changed how much since high school graduation. Pete Black had received a scholarship to Yale, Dorianne Wallingford wore a new tan and pair of D-cups, Alan Grey was studying film-making. _Film-making_!

"Wasn't he intent on becoming the next Ford Coppola?"

"More like the next Bam Margera."

She didn't know more about these people than their names popping up throughout their conversation but then again, Shannon wondered if she knew anything at all about her old friends. Greer had promised to meet up, Meg had promised to call. She had stopped waiting.

"I can't believe I once dated Alan 'Viva la' Grey. Ugh." Claudia mused eloquently, spooning in mouthfuls of her Chocolate Brownie Avalanche complete with chocolate ice-cream, sauce, and sprinkles. Kristy wrinkled her nose and Mary Anne smiled bemusedly. Probably at a joke only the three of them got.

Shannon took a long sip from her lemonade soda, wishing for a moment that she was in a distant, smoky city bar with nothing but a glass of something spiked for company. It would offset her loneliness better than the cherry-colored leather upholstered seats and rose-printed curtains at the Café. Then again, this was Stoneybrook. Angst clashed horribly in this town.

All of a sudden, she had to ask, "So what's Stacey up to in New York?"

Mary Anne sputtered over her diet Coke. The scowl returned to Claudia's face. Kristy raised her eyes to the ceiling and kept them there.

"Was it that bad?"

Of course Shannon had reason to doubt. They weren't thirteen any more. Problems were exaggerations, nothing more.

When Kristy spoke, she addressed the glimmer of the noon-warmed asphalt on the road, out the window. "Stacey's made for bigger things. Better things, she thinks."

"Oh."

"Can't say I'm surprised she chose good ol' New York over Stoneybrook. She's done it before. She's ditched us twice. I guess the third time was the charm, considering how she's crawling back, begging for us to be friends again…"

Mary Anne nodded, with more weariness than she'd shown before. "People change…"

"Can we stop talking about this?"

Shannon took one look at Claudia's expression and signaled the waitress to bring their bill.

* * *

She returned home more tired than when she'd set out and more unsettled. On the other hand, the house felt less than ever. Neither Tiffany nor Maria had returned, though her mother was hanging around the kitchen with a drink.

"Is that the Christmas brandy?"

"Don't ask, dear," Her mother crept around her, barefoot. "It's been one of those days…"

"… Of course. I'd understand."

The answering-machine's blinking drew her to slump on the sofa. She pressed the 'play' button.

"_Hey, it's Bart Taylor. Tell Shannon to give me a ring sometime soon. If she has the time, that is. Thanks."_

It struck her then.

He had wanted to take up writing too. In case his baseball career didn't catch on.

Her day's resolution to avoid over-thinking forgotten, Shannon fell back into their hidden cache of memories, wondering if she would ever learn anything from replaying those little aches over and over again.


	5. Chapter 5

It's like the time her parents were going through a rough patch in their marriage and all she could do then was stand by and wait for the bombs to hit. They had never raised their voices when arguing, only just short of reaching that point.

In a way, that had been the worst part. Waiting for the lightning to strike, preparing to dodge the first missile that flew over. Shannon had taken refuge in her shelter of books and paperwork, reading of people who had it far, far worse. There were people out there who felt the sting of what befell them and earned scars deeper than hers would go. She wasn't failing her classes, she hadn't chopped off her hair and dyed the remaining a shade of fuchsia bubblegum, she hadn't cracked so thoroughly as to take a blade to her wrist.

So of course she hadn't known what he was going through at the time. Her parents had fought their hushed battles over the bowl of lasagna on the dining-room table while his had taken the easy way out and brought out the divorce papers before either could say another word. Of course she couldn't get it. Shannon had a long way to fall before her life could reach the low his had.

For a while, she had suspected the worst of his mood swings. By the end of their first year and a half together, there was not an article on narcotics she hadn't browsed through. She had feared for him enough to court the temptation to rummage through his sports-bag as he left it with her while playing a game of touch football with the guys. Trust had stayed her hand. It had been enough for her to question her own at the end of the day.

When she would arrive home to a full, yet painfully quiet dinner-table, Shannon would realize why.

This wasn't the kind of peace she wanted for herself. She wanted Bart and her to be better than either of their parents.

They could at least try for that.

* * *

He had called her the day before, after she'd gotten back from her all-girl outing, to ask her if she could drop by his place and 'you know, just hang with me for a while'.

She didn't think twice before agreeing. 'Hanging' was a piece of cake once you had the experience to account for the dirt clinging beneath your fingernails. Meg had once said she'd had a 'knack' for resilience.

"Practice makes perfect," was how she'd replied.

The walk to the Taylors' felt unsettlingly familiar. Back in the good ol' days, Shannon could always trust in the warm greeting Mrs. Taylor would grace her with, even when it was easy to tell how her day had been from the strain in her smile. Perhaps living in house overrun with testosterone cost the price of willing female ear. Shannon could understand why she'd decided to move out in the end. Men preferred to keep their troubles stoppered beneath brooding husks. It sounded better in the novels.

Bart was seated in his wheelchair on the porch. She almost had her hand raised to wave, then realized it wouldn't be the only expression forced for the occasion. Instead, she kept her smile and opted for a soft 'Hey' as she got closer.

He shifted just so that the midday sun glinted copper-red in his hair. "Hey yourself."

"How're you doing?"

"Fine." And that was that. She had forgotten how his smile used to make her feel.

Carefully, she took her place on the floor beside him, cross-legged. It reminded her of playschool, gathering around to hear what came next in the story. Right now, she had no clue as to what that ought to be. But the view made up for it. Bart's eyes never left her.

"Thanks for coming. Sorry if it interrupted your other plans, by the way."

"It was no problem. And I didn't have anything else on my plate either."

She had predicted that the conversation would take that awkward turn sooner or later. Well, she might as well get there before he could. She dug straight into the dormant journalist in her and released the first arrow.

"I didn't know you had a drinking problem, Bart."

It hurt for a second. As it sunk in, so did the realization that he couldn't hurt her more than he already had in the past. There was a glimmer of something like hurt in the glance he gave her. But he turned away, to the light, to an old habit.

"I wouldn't have called it a problem back then. A couple of beers on a Saturday night, nothing else to look forward to over the summer. It's not like none of the other guys tried it."

"The peer pressure ploy is a sneaky one, I hear."

Bart grimaced. "… Logan Bruno was there."

"Huh." Hilarious as the idea of Mary Anne's cheesy ex blind drunk was, she wasn't going to let him off so soon. "Did Logan Bruno have anything to do with you getting behind the wheel after your sixth can?"

"I'll take credit for that one."

"You're laughing."

That brought his gaze to hers.

She waited for an answer. She had been waiting.

"Yeah, I'm laughing, Shan. Once you get past all the rage and cussing, there's not much else. It's pretty hilarious to watch your friends drift away, one by one, so that they don't have to deal with your sorry ass every time they pass by. So… yeah, I'm cracking up."

She felt the last phrase pang inside her chest. It was the type of ache she got when going through those old photo-albums and happening upon that perfect moment she hadn't thought about in years until that very second.

Of course he was cracking up. She'd been stupid and asked the wrong question again.

But what did she want from him, apart from the right answer?

"Okay… I'm sorry. Let's talk about something else. On my first day in Boston, I roamed around until I came across this great little art gallery. They were showcasing these vintage prints by some guy who'd spent a year busking in Spain in the sixties. The one that caught my eye was called 'Actitud Salvaje'."

"Subtitles, please."

"Savage stance."

"Sexy."

That made her quirk a real smile. "It was a painting of a bull-fighter. It was the red that got me. You almost didn't notice the bull because of the way his cape seemed to fly across the canvas. I found that rather liberating."

"Liberating?"

"You couldn't see anything but that moment of bravado. It reminded me of how I felt when I first set foot in that city, until I looked down at the map I'd brought along."

"Hmm."

He had his lips pressed tight. She couldn't blame him for not wanting to talk about his own experiences post-split.

"So have you thought about college? Kristy told me you'd spent the year at home. It must be…" She would let that space speak for itself.

Bart remained silent as he appeared to contemplate a battered classic Chevy clinking down the street, passing them by. Shannon thought she recognized Charlie Thomas and – to her surprise – Janine Kishi in the front seats.

"I wanted to take up coaching."

She jerked her attention away from the unlikely couple, back to him. "Oh? That'd be great, Bart. You have all that experience with the kids and – "

"I scratched that idea."

Though disappointed, she didn't look away again. "Bart, I don't think your injury's going to be a problem, if you can get the right training. I'm sure there are lots of people who have coached from the sidelines in a wheelchair."

"It's not that." He paused, squeezing his temples as he thought of a reason. "Shannon, if I'm going to have to start coaching, it's going to have been with the kids from elementary school. Maybe the middle schoolers, if I'm lucky."

"You've known these kids since _you_ were in middle school. All that respect you earned can't have gone to waste."

"That's the point. News travels far in a place like this. Every kid I knew and their parents probably know _why_ I need a chair in the first place. Their old mini league coach won't ever walk again because he got pissed drunk at a summer blowout. So much for any respect I had."

"Kids can be capable of some amazing things. You need to give them a chance. Give yourself a chance."

"Not this amazing."

"Have you tried?"

"Not hard enough, if that's what you mean."

"I wasn't implying anything, Bart. What I meant was that you probably underestimate your own capabilities."

"You wouldn't kno – "

"Stop." The ice in her voice rose as she gripped one of the chair's arm-rests to steady herself. "I've heard enough of that."

Bart was quick to get the point, even if he wouldn't let it rattle him too easily. He wasn't frowning… come to think of it, he had never frowned when they used to have those talks near the baseball diamond at SDS. He didn't have it in him to get mad at her, he would tell her.

"_You frustrate me sometimes, yeah. But you mean well. I know."_

His eyes would cloud over with a listless resignation she had learnt to recognize at home. Her parents never took their arguments to bed either. They piled them up neatly, maybe clattered them around a bit to remind the other of their neglected presence, and then put them away with the rest of the sauce-pans and salad bowls and spatulas. Slide them into a drawer, slide it closed again. Whether she wanted to or not, Shannon found herself waiting for something to fall over anytime soon. The tension was a force to be swallowed and its after-taste licked about in her mouth.

But yet, her parents hadn't given up on each other. The family vacations were scheduled as planned, the light kiss her mother planted on her father's cheek before he went to work was still a habit, everything in their neatly-ordered life was running its course.

All of that should have prepared her for this meeting. In a way, she had prepared her mind to counter any dead-end discussions, to meet his disappointments with careful optimism. He wasn't her boyfriend anymore, but as the cliché went, the first loves were the most powerful. The first cut had been the deepest. She had blinded her head to it, but the heart would clasp it closer still.

"I'm sorry, Shannon. About what I said earlier."

The phrase 'You should be' clung to her tongue, though it never left it. Rather, she nodded, just like polite, mature adults did in her world. The will to fight to defend her opinion to the bitter end had burned out with the last of her journalistic ambitions. If she wanted to get through life sane, she had learned to compromise the heart for her head. Anything to stay afloat.

She just had to give this one last shot.

"You could be great, Bart. I believed that. I still do."

The damage was done. The smoke lingered at the barrel of the gun.

She took her time looking at him, _really_ looking at the man he was on the way to becoming. The hint of stubble lent his profile – paler and slightly drawn – a more ragged silhouette. If she was a painter, she would have been reaching for her oil colors to capture this picture as soon as possible. With the shadow of the overhanging roof and the sunlight beyond, he was heartbreakingly scenic.

"Thank you, Shannon," was all he finally came up with.

She stayed long enough to turn down an invitation from Mr. Taylor to stay over for lunch. She walked back the way she came, returned to a house still empty and hollow, and made herself a wheat-bread and turkey sandwich.


	6. Chapter 6

Greer calls at the wrong time, right after the first aftershock. That was what Shannon had taken to calling those 'little disagreements' her parents get into once things get too quiet, so quiet they can hear their thoughts stagnate. They weren't that loud, but those fights still reeked. She could feel the echoes from upstairs in her room. So when the phone rings, she almost doesn't pick it up, in case it sets off another one. The way patterns worked around here, they seemed like clockwork.

But she did pick up the receiver and answer with the token 'Hello?' Nothing too cheery, but steady enough not to give anything away. Greer was living the high life with little time to spare for sob stories. Shannon knew her friend didn't have that inclination. Not anymore.

"Shannon! Hey! I just got back from LA last night."

"That's great." It didn't come out the way she expected. She forced the smile into her words. "That's great, Greer. Can I come over?"

"You didn't have to ask, hun."

That felt good to know and Shannon allowed herself to be calmed by that old phrase, carelessly thrown out or not. She'd be lying to herself if she thought that this was a sure sign that people couldn't really change deep down within. But it was still the quiet after the storm. Shannon could use some cheering up, as wispy as this seemed.

Just in case, she gave herself twenty minutes before setting out. Nowadays, she could rarely be sure if she was the right person everyone needed around.

* * *

The sound of heels clicking along was the first Shannon heard after ringing the Carsons' doorbell. Soon after, a squeak and cuss were the next, right before Greer swept the door open and wailed, "My left Jimmy Choo heel!"

"So I take it I've been upgraded from sometime sidekick and cram-session buddy?"

Greer gasped, then punched her arm playfully.

"Shannon Kilbourne, how dare you think you occupy that lowly a position! You're the Louboutin to my Ferragamo, of course."

"Glad to know that."

Shannon knew better than expect the histrionics to end just there. Sure enough, Greer paused long enough mid-hug to toe off the much emphasized piece of footwear and pout at the snapped heel. "_Really_, Shan, sixty dollars after a _discount_. I should've known better."

"You keep telling yourself that, Carson."

She kept on smiling as Greer grabbed her by the elbow, leading her through the hallway and up the stairs to her room. Meeting her old friend nudged a warmer place inside her, in a different way from when she'd spent that afternoon with Bart. There was no point in proving herself; she was still the same, good ol' Shannon to Greer, Meg, and maybe the rest of her friends. She didn't mind that much, actually. It gave her less to build on, less to adapt to. It wasn't as tiresome with someone who wanted the one side of your heart they'd always known.

Like its owner, Greer's room hadn't changed in ways the eye could see. There were the scatterbrained magenta and fuchsia prints grinning 'ta-dah!' from the duvet, love-seat, and walls. There were the clothes and costume jewelry sprinkled over the noise, probably hoping to mask it under sugar-pastel shirts and earrings glinting under the sunlight like strewn cellophane candy-wrappers. There was Greer riding the nonsense with a stream of chatter in her wake.

And yet, when she blinked past the whirl of color and sound, there were things that shook Shannon just enough to warrant a raised eyebrow. Or two.

Leopard-print heels, red under-soles. She could see the appeal.

Greer had finally settled on the bed with a MacBook perched on a pillow before her. She patted the space beside her, motioning Shannon to sit. A few clicks later, the glow of Greer's sun-washed Californian life away from home began. She tapped a face as it appeared on-screen.

"That's TJ. I told you about him the last time I wrote? Air-guitar guy?"

"There were a lot of guys, Greer," Shannon chuckled. "I'm pretty certain you'd gone through a list as long as Stoneybrook's census of single men our age. Cut me some slack."

Greer rolled her eyes. "Sure, mock me for expanding my horizons. Recall that I explicitly mentioned I would _not_ remain tied to the ball and chain that is a guy from this town too limited to realize there's potential beyond a lifetime of sorting clothes-racks at Bellair's and stacking dishes at Pizza Express. The provincial life wasn't made for me."

"You've been watching far too many Disney princess movies."

"Nope."

The sigh came on cue. Greer watched the slideshow with a new glum expression.

"LA's spoiled me. I had a hard time leaving."

Shannon noticed how Greer's teeth shone in the next picture that appeared. A stark-white Hollywood smile almost obscured by a pair of enormous sun-glasses that made her appear more waif-like than Shannon thought she could.

"You know what's the first thing I'm going shopping for once I get back? An agent."

"Like for bit roles in TV films?"

"Shut up. That's how they all they start out." Greer lay back and rolled over on to her stomach, allowing her chin to sink into a pillow. "Shirley Temple was an extra before she got herself that contract."

"She was three years old, Greer. You're practically ancient, compared to her."

"Please, I'm old enough to play a teen on primetime TV. The whole _Dawson's Creek_ cast were in their twenties when they were shooting that series."

A photo of Greer posing below the distant Hollywood Sign flashed before them briefly.

Even Shannon had to admit it. "You're really set on this, aren't you?"

"Totally." There was probably a good reason why Greer had chosen that moment to bury her face in the pillow. "We should take a trip there one day. Just us girls. Rent an RV, invite Meg, sneak into Beverly Hills sometime. Oh my God, I have _got_ to show you the boutiques they've got! They make Bellair's look like a mom-and-pop shop…"

She had a vision of the whole scene unfolding: her, Meg, and Greer nestled in an open-top candy-red Camarro on a sunny road lying between sandy plains and kitsch road-stop restaurants. They would find plenty of things to laugh at on their way and sing out of tune to Top 40 songs that smacked like bubble-gum in their mouths. Undeniably endearing as the picture was, she couldn't place her mind on the one thing about that bothered her.

"Sure, Greer. We could try that sometime…" she still found herself nodding.

A mobile chimed with the promise of an incoming text. Shannon absently patted the outside of her pocket before she noticed Greer snatch a turquoise flip-phone off the bedside table. Her eyes lit up as soon as the screen did. Giggling, she tapped out a reply with expert precision and sent it with a quick thumb-jab.

"Hot date?" Shannon asked.

"Austin Bentley."

"I've heard that name before."

"He went to Stoneybrook High. The guy drives a Cadillac _and_ speaks French. I couldn't believe it myself."

Shannon wondered if Claudia had dated him.

"Oh, by the way, Meg sent me a message. She isn't leaving NYC until August. Apparently it's the height of party season and she wants to take advantage of the free alcopops in those Manhattan bars. End sarcastic diatribe."

"I bet you'd get free liquor in Stoneybrook if you knew where to look…" Shannon paused at the arch of Greer's eyebrow. Obviously, she'd just stumbled and stepped out of character.

"_Right_."

"Just saying. Not that I'd know."

"Shannon Louisa Kilbourne, have you been partying and sampling Stoneybrook's secret illicit nightlife about behind my back?"

"Of course not!"

"I promise I won't get mad. Deets please?" Greer grinned.

"Seriously. No. I haven't done much since getting back from Boston, except hang out with the old BSC girls."

"Oh yeah, that quaint little club of yours – "

"Not 'mine', anyway. I quit before the end of eighth grade, remember? I never really…"

'_Belonged.'_

She had never been more grateful for Greer cutting off her sentence.

"I heard they broke up around high-school though? Thank God. Their cult modus operandi always made my skin crawl."

"Thirteen year olds."

A small pause later, she met Greer's gaze on its way to the silver-framed photo hanging on the wall across. It had been taken after a dress rehearsal for the Drama Club's 'Night of Shakespeare'; Shannon even remembered the hours of frustration spent on sewing yards of ruffles into her Desdemona costume. Meg had landed the role of Juliet… she remembered the flowy chiffon gown and fake roses in her hair. Which part had Greer played again…

"Were _we_ as terrible?"

"Not in my mind."

That was the truth, as far as Shannon knew.

Unlike with Bart, Shannon allowed herself to stay over for dinner at the Carsons'. Whether Mr. and Mrs. Carson's marriage felt as solid behind locked doors was another thing, but for the moment, it felt nice to see something good in progress. Prose and poetry had taught Shannon that all relationships were works in progress, but that couldn't discount for the warmth in a glance passed carefully from one to another as if it were a diamond ring or secret key. A thing that was precious, to be beheld and adored with all the heart of one of a committed pair.

Greer often complained that her parents were 'in cahoots with each other' whenever she got into trouble. The phrase made Shannon laugh instead, as she imagined the Carsons plotting away in the privacy of their bedroom. Maybe Mr. Carson patted his wife's arm comfortingly when their daughter was a few hours late for curfew, maybe she would fix him with one of those knowing looks that most settled couples forged over the years.

Shannon knew these things. She'd heard of them. She studied them, hoping that they would fit in place like rungs on a ladder when it came time to navigate her own one true relationship and she wouldn't make the same mistakes again and bear the same agony.

Maybe she was being melodramatic. Maybe Greer had finally rubbed off on her.

Yeah, it could be that simple.

Greer tried to talk her into a sleep-over which she brushed off weakly with the excuse of getting started on extra projects for college.

"Good Lord, Shannon! You never learn, do you?"

That phrase hurt harder than it ought to.

If truth be told, she instantly regretted refusing to stay the night once she'd turned the corner from the Carson's and headed straight for home down the street. The only things she could think of then were things more depressing than returning to a big empty house. She could have spent the night in Greer's room, munching on Graham crackers as they watched musicals on her new flat-screen, talking about anything but boys and old friends.

But try as she did to convince herself that one night of blessed forgetfulness would have set things right for the next few weeks, she had already realized that she had changed too little to catch up with those old friends.

Was she really this naïve? Greer and Meg wanted to move on to better, brighter things halfway across the country while she hung on to the boring, plain, safe ol' Stoneybrook she'd called home.

And now that she _really_ thought of it, maybe it was time for her to move on. Not out or away, but try and move on.

* * *

The open door had Shannon raising her guard as she entered her house, only for her to drop it momentarily as she came across Tiffany on the hallway phone. Sighing with annoyance, she was about to go upstairs before she noticed her sister's color.

Pale, trembling, Tiffany lowered the receiver and turned to Shannon.

"It's Bart."

Something in her voice caught. Shannon waited for the bomb to drop, silent with anxiety.

"He… he… oh, Shannon, he's in hospital. They're saying he tried to kill himself…"


	7. Chapter 7

The hospital was quiet enough to make Shannon second-guess her decision to come here. It didn't seem fair that it compelled her to remain calm at a time like this.

A petite Asian receptionist manned the phone behind an off-white counter. Her face matched her surroundings: impassive, intransigent in its professional sense of peace. Shannon strode past a trembling couple hunkered down in their plastic chairs as they waited for news, to the woman on the phone and asked in a voice she recognized well: "I'm here to see Bart Taylor."

This was her go-to tone for appointments and disasters. It suited her Business major, where a calm, level voice reflected the same of the accompanying mind. Shannon the Business Major was someone whom everyone liked and admired. The tag got her to places of knowledge, crammed with fellow intellectuals and cranial conversations lined with cups of coffee at cafes steaming with the bookish. Of late though, it hadn't been getting her any answers to questions she'd nursed for a year.

"I'm here to see Bart Taylor," she repeated.

The receptionist held up a placating hand, wedged the phone between ear and raised shoulder, and used the remaining free hand to tap a few keys on the computer before her. A few seconds was all it took.

"Room 206," she read to Shannon, their eyes not meeting.

"Thank you."

Shannon walked over to the lifts, ballet flats soundless on tiled floor. She found the emptiness unsettling, almost surreal as the news she'd heard barely a few minutes ago. Bart had always had friends to cushion his depression-fueled antics in high school. She expected one of them to jump out from around a corner with a stupid grin and catcall. High school boys were always high school boys anyway, until they were thrown out in the deep end. Perhaps Bart's isolation had cut him off from his pack, leaving him a true lone wolf.

Her hand shook as she brushed a loose strand of hair from her face. Even that didn't suit him, 'the lone wolf'. She remembered his old smile and it pushed hard at the title: 'lone wolf'. Alone; it was a terrible word.

She entered the lift and waited until the doors pinged open on the second floor. The hallway she stepped into was just as quiet as the floor below. It didn't take her long to find the room. She paused at the door, wanting to lean her head against something solid, but took a deep breath instead and knocked.

Mr. Taylor didn't look surprised to see her when he answered. Then again, news of the bad kind worked their way fast through small towns. Another fact Shannon had almost forgotten about. He was now looking at her expectantly and she didn't feel as self-possessed as she had been with the receptionist. What counted was her, Shannon, just Shannon Kilbourne, the girl who Bart Taylor had…

"I… I heard about it," she murmured. "My sister told me. I wanted to see him."

"He's been asleep for the last hour."

So he was. Though pale from being cooped up indoors for all these months, Bart's skin retained some of the healthy tan from his baseball days. Eyes closed, he looked the most peaceful she'd seen in days. If it weren't for the angry red wounds scoured onto his arms, she would have been content to be lulled into the same calm. The closer she got, the more the red seared past the white sheets and pale blue hospital gown.

She wanted to touch him. Nothing carnal, nothing possessive, she just wanted to feel him breathe and not have to watch for it from this close.

So that's what she did.

Weaving past the IV line, her hand wound its way into his and the old warmth of never having to look back returned with the scent of fresh apple pie from that day at The Rosebud Café.

* * *

"Northeastern, huh?"

Bart may as well be swallowing a pill with the way he tried to do with the name on her college acceptance letter. She had braced herself for worse though; at least, he wasn't sitting across from her with a frown or fake little smile.

"It wasn't my first choice, but it's still a good one."

He glanced up at her from his plate of cheesecake, mouth puckered in a chuckle, eyes flickering through a range of suppressed hurt. "Most people don't have the honor of saying their second choice is _still_ one of the best schools in the country."

"I know."

She guessed she was lucky. Then again, most of it had been down to her hard work anyway. Shannon Kilbourne, straight A student, popular enough to earn an envious glance or two, the apple of her parents' eyes, and newly single. These were good choice, she told herself.

Bart accepted it well. As it seemed then.

"Boston," she almost whispered, like it was on the verge of collapse. "I've always wanted to go there. Everyone I know goes on about California and New York, but Boston's going to be the one for me."

"How do you know? Does it make your heart race, chest flutter, have a hot accent? Does it sparkle in the sun, instead of just tanning like normal guys do?"

"I don't know. And that's the thing. I'm going to walk into it like a stranger and feel my way about carefully. I'm going to find my way through it little by little, until I've learnt every nook and cranny by heart."

He leaned back, his plate untouched for the last few minutes or so. "That was… kinda beautiful."

"I wasn't expecting that myself." Telling him, that is. Not what she just had.

Their break-up wasn't even a month fresh. Had it been enough time to heal, to hang out over coffee and cake on a Thursday afternoon, mulling over futures that lay as unraveled as their histories? Were the scars really gone or was it only because she'd succeeded in looking away?

A ripple of laughter from the adjacent booth caught their attention. A pretty brunette girl they knew from school giggled behind her sundae at something her red-haired date – one of the Pike triplets, maybe? – was saying. It made Shannon regret for a moment that she'd stopped babysitting. Foregoing the extra income was another thing, missing out on more of these scenes filtered in sunlight and innocence was another. Tiffany and Maria had grown up too fast for her to truly appreciate them as her kid sisters. Hearing them tottering about in stilettos high as their insecurities, hearing that tiny note of uncertainty in their voice when they discussed boys on the phone with their friends made her regret a lot of other little things.

After one quick sidelong look at the couple, Bart returned to his cheesecake. After a few quiet seconds had passed, he finally took a bite.

"Not bad." he said without gazing up at her again. "But I wonder if this is as good as it gets for me."

She couldn't guess if it was the kids, the cake, the weird transit they were suspended from, or just about nothing at all that he was talking about but she still replied, "You never know if you never try."

"I guess…"

She thought of something else nice and sweet to fill the silence eating into their time alone, and nothing quite hit that spot she was looking for. And what was she looking for?

Instead, she closed her eyes, took a quick breath, opened them, and let the words unfold. Not quite the ones of her liking, but they felt right for the moment.

"Look on the bright side, Bart. You'll be going to college nearer home. You'll never lose completely lose touch with everyone you know. You won't have to put up with those awkward reunions whenever you come home to visit for the summer, since you could just drop by every weekend. Well… almost every weekend, because you wouldn't want to miss out on anything going on in college. I mean, parties, football games, girls…"

A flush rose in her cheeks. That last word hadn't been intended to be spoken aloud, even if she'd imagined it – reluctantly.

It was just a part of letting go, she told herself. Like picking off a scab.

Things had to hurt before they got better.

Bit by bit, he poked at the pile of cake rubble with a grimace. "It's too sweet. I don't know why I even ordered it."

"Have a sip of my lemonade?"

She slid the glass across to him, but he shook his head. "S'alright, Shan. But thanks."

Typical. If there had been any sign of the finality of their relationship's end, here was the seal. He would never change, he would grow stagnant as the years blew along, and she would be none the wiser to any of his mistakes.

"Heh, Northeastern. I knew I could always expect the best from you."

She would never forget the wry glint of happiness in his eyes when they met hers. "I'm proud of you, Shannon."

* * *

Bart's eyelids flickered.

Her hand closed around his tighter.

He didn't wake.

Shannon let out the sigh she had been holding in and took a seat in the chair beside the bed. The clock read ten; she'd promised Greer a shopping trip and movie date. For as long as she remembered, Shannon Kilbourne had never stood up a friend for a boy. She did believe in soul-mates and she had believed that she would know one when she found it.

Maybe that was what was wrong with it all, in the end. Maybe you never were supposed to know if the person you loved was really worth the effort. Perhaps it was better to take each mistake, each misstep, as something to build upon, and when you looked back at it, and then looked to what you had now, then what? She was eighteen and had the world for a canvas. If there was anything she could afford, it was a few scars for another shot at healing her own.

And maybe…

Just maybe…

Maybe she and Bart didn't have to make their parents' mistakes.

It was beautiful – and terribly sad – to imagine. That they had been this close to it. He had given up when he'd needed her the most, probably because it would've set her free from his burdens. And she had run too easily, had swallowed freedom by the mouthful, hoping for an antidote to that sudden implosion of weightlessness within her, anything to make her believe she enjoyed the world from that far off the ground.

This time, she closed her eyes and listened for the hush of his breathing. It rose and ebbed rhythmically, reminding her that time did too, no matter from what angle she looked at it from.

The tears came and all Shannon could do was smile. She hadn't had an epiphany in a while; if she had to be honest, it felt good to let her fears go for now.

A creak at the door made her look up at Mr. Taylor. With the limp hands and hair, he almost didn't look his age. In that moment, she thought him only a little less vulnerable than his son.

"Mr. Taylor, do you mind I borrow your cell-phone, please?"

His eyes were blue to Bart's brown. Right now, they stared at her, uncomprehending.

"I have to call home," she said, dimly reminding herself of her hand still enclosed in Bart's. "I'm staying the night here. They'd want to know where I was."

"Are you sure?"

She nodded.

He handed her the phone and moved over to the other side of the bed as she dialed. By the time she'd finished smoothing over her mother's concerns and Tiffany's inquiries, Mr. Taylor spoke.

"It's going to be fine."

It was later that Shannon realized that it wasn't her he was talking to.

"It's going to be fine. Just hang in there."


	8. Chapter 8

He could have given in already to the pain, but there are colors and voices seeping over him, each strand of one curling into the other and he thinks this is when he's supposed to come around, lift an eyelid, take a peek, arise and try to piece himself together. He supposes he should and he tries to, his eyes groping for a tag of sound to latch on to and just trying to… stay afloat…

For a second, he lies still as the weight of his decision sinks in. He's still as his reflection returns to gaze at him from the speckled pool of a bathroom mirror before his sight dips down to the razor-blades pressed against his wrist. Of course there's more pain, spurting in red and now that he thinks about it, he doesn't remember paying so much attention to his hands since he'd cupped his face in them to stop himself from looking down to his feet. His feet stable and cramped in wheel-chair pedals foot-rests he's too late to outgrow, a pair of feet suspended mid-jump in a photograph of a sunny last summer spent on baseball and plotting futures.

He remembers a voice crying out and wondering if it's his.

He then remembers looking back towards the door he'd forgot to close, the one his Dad stands against with mouth hanging open and hands reaching out to him. And then it was quiet.

He remembers time – who knew, hours, days, or just a long, long, night – slipping along in currents of blinks. One second, blood on a pristine gurney. Another flits by, a bed that doesn't remind him of home.

For some weird reason, he finds himself thinking of his mother and that he hadn't called her for the past week and two days. A week ago, Kyle had stomped out of his room when they'd fought over a pack of trading cards. He couldn't remember why or how they'd ended up arguing in the first place, so it can't have mattered much.

Still, he wouldn't mind the memory. If it's the last one he'll ever have of his kid brother, he'll take anything over nothing.

He blinks. Tries to. His eyelids have never felt so heavy. He twitches an arm, feels the tip of a wire holed in somewhere under his skin.

Then, all of a sudden, he needs sleep. Like his brother's raised voice in his head, he allows it to slip over him, muffling the rest of his thoughts.

* * *

He's walking towards a stall, so he figures he's dreaming.

The man in charge grins toothily and pats a softball in into his hand, his mouth jogging a mile a minute and it would've been interesting, fun to watch, but it's been a while – a good, long one – since he's had something to throw, something to smash. He flings it at the nearest pyramid of bottles and watches as the triangle bursts into an emerald shower of glass that smells like cinnamon and cotton candy.

He wants to hear it again, the sharp cry of something else falling apart.

The softballs keep on being pressed into his open palm and he keeps on aiming them at the endless line of bottles that appear, throwing so hard that everything is nothing but falling, glittering shards of glass.

He wakes up in the same strange bed, listening to the steady robotic beeps of a heart-rate monitor.

Everything's clearer than it was. There's a doctor making a note on a clipboard, blue scrubs and white coat, she sends a smile his way that doesn't reach her eyes. Ten seconds later, he forgets what she says to him before leaving him alone in his room. There's nothing but the ceiling to stare at when he looks up.

Ten minutes later, he and his Dad listen to the clock on the wall tick its way through time.

It's Wednesday night and there's supposed to be a basketball game down in Mercer. Mercer, with its streets, cul-de-sacs, schools, homes, people, just like Stoneybrook. Another small town choked with escapist dreams drying out on hot summer nights. He can't help but think of warmth now; beneath a jacket or stuffed duvet, a hug after a hello, a slip of alcohol down his throat.

The memories stop right there. He forces them to.

They crash into each other, until everything's a melded mess. He can't think of anything better to take his mind off of it.

From time to time, his Dad opens his mouth like he has something important to say and then closes it because it sounds worthless in his head. Words had a weird way of gathering in your mouth when you most wanted to spit them out and then clumping together so that they stuck to your tongue. He can understand the feeling, so he can't blame his old man for his silence.

He doesn't blame anyone. Not really.

For not sticking around, not wanting to fake their ease with a crippled body and heart. For getting up and going on like life was supposed to. For being who they were: bright, able, and free to run.

He tastes these thoughts and they crystallize on his tongue and swallows them with the bitterness and the rest of the tears that have hardened at the back of his throat and then all he wants is the night, this night, and sleep.

* * *

He's running to the stall, so he definitely knows he's dreaming.

Bottles break faster than the man-in-charge can pop syllables over the tinkle of glass shattering. And then, the pain erupts, he looks down at his hands and looks at them stained with red, trickling down to his wrists.

There's the smell of Fall in the air and there's the scent of perfume he'd promised to keep out of his mind forever.

There's a voice calling his name and there's a hand pressing into his, closing around it with her fingers.

There's a chance that he won't regret reaching out.

"Bart?"

"Bart?"

He opens his eyes and there she is, smiling sad eyes and full mouth just the same. He'd kissed her once upon a time after a fair and she had been soft, safe, warm. Shannon's been there for him and maybe she has been all this time, even before he decided to embrace the darkness.

How long had it been since then?

"Bart," she repeats his name and her smile trickles into his mouth, until he feels it on mirrored on his lips. "Oh, Bart…"

The hand she's holding leads to a scarred wrist.

"I'm so glad you're okay."

Well, far from it. But this time, he holds tight and decides not to let go.


End file.
